> I also do not have a position of whether Mumia was
> actually guilty. I do note, and this is the purpose of
> this post, that his case does not make him out to be a
> poster child case of wrongful conviction. He's unlike,
> e.g., Hurricane Carter or Rolando Cruz in that regard.
> The Beverly confession is hardly a show-stopper.
> Excellent lawyers, like Weinglass (Mumia's first
> counsel in this process, and the one who got him
> habeas relief) found it too weak to be credible. That
> is the legal point.
>
> But there is also a political point. The political
> point is that it's a mistake for the left to get too
> invested in the facts of a particular matter in the
> legal process. You can't sensibly accuse people of
> being sellouts and phonies because they have beliefs
> about particular concrete facts that might well be so
> in light of the evidence. Julius Rosenbergh turns out,
> it seems, to have been a spy. That doesn't alter the
> fact taht he was legally lynched by an unjust process,
> he was framed anyway. Guilty or not -- unlike Moore I
> don't think we'll ever know, Mumia was railroaded, and
> no one should face death. That, and the political
> dimension, is enough reason to support the defendant
> in cases like this.
Andie's point matches my position, but for my suspicion that Mumia did in fact kill Daniel Faulkner. (No other account seems as likely, and Beverly's confession doesn't strike me as credible.) It is certain that Mumia should not have been prosecuted for first-degree murder (second-degree seems more accurate), and that his trial was not conducted by decent standards of jurisprudence. It could be argued that he should be a free man, given such factors as his likelihood of killing again (low), and the length of time he's spent behind bars for the crime. And I ought to reiterate my opposition to the death penalty anyway.
As Andie mentioned, Mumia's case just isn't as strong as that of many others on Death Row, where the evidence is more equivocal, where subsequent investigation's exonerated defendants, and where new forensic techniques have enabled us to overturn many convictions. Cases such as these make me wish that there wasn't as much attention on the Mumia case; frankly, it's polarized Philadelphia so much that we simply _can't_ have a decent discussion about the death penalty. Half the city sees Faulkner as a saint in blue, with Mumia as a rabid, dreadlocked, MOVE-mad cop-killer, while the other sees Mumia as a radical hero persecuted by the racist, classist, capitalist Powers that Be-- and Faulkner isn't mentioned very much.
I can think of a really nasty end for all of this: the Governor commutes Mumia's sentence to life without parole. It'd take nearly every urgency away from Mumia's supporters, and probably help them move on to more urgent issues. If he continues to write, fine. But it'd piss off the Mumia haters, many of whom are cops who'd adopt betrayed-by-the-politicians self-pity, and many of whom want to watch the guy fry. So it's not likely to happen unless the Governor squares it with the Philly FOP big time.